Favorite Bar Cookie Recipes and Homemade Squares

Family favorite bar cookie recipes for the best cookie bars and homemade squares baked in a pan.

They go by lots of names -- bar cookies, cookie bars, pan cookies, squares, brownies, and blondies just to name a few.

No matter what you call them, bar cookies deliver some of the easiest tastiest treats available.

I love cookie bar recipes! Maybe because, as much as I enjoy cooking and baking, I'm a little lazy.

I love baking shortcuts and easy cookie recipes that don't compromise on taste or quality.

So if you're a little lazy like me, or too busy to spend hours on complicated, fancy desserts but still want to enjoy tasty homemade treats, you're going to love these easy family favorite bar cookie recipes.

These baked cookie bars are the perfect sweet solution, providing a delicious dessert or sweet treat for minimal investment of time and energy.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

The Beauty of Bar Cookies

With most cookie bars, all you have to do is stir together your ingredients, spread them into a pan, and pop them into a pre-heated oven. Usually, in about 30 minutes, you'll be rewarded with luscious homemade bar cookies that once cooled, are often stored right in the same pan, covered with foil or plastic. They truly are the simplest of cookies because such little tending and handling is required.

The great thing about cookie bars is that there's no forming, shaping, or baking batch after batch, like with drop cookies, formed cookies, and rolled cookies. And the variety of bar cookie recipes is endless. Taking their flavor lead from other homemade desserts like pies, cakes, and quick breads, the perfect bar cookie recipe exists for any craving or occasion. Popular flavor options for cookie bars include lemon, spice, chocolate, carrot, pumpkin, zucchini, peanut butter, butterscotch, raspberry, apple, and coconut.

What's Your Favorite?

So what's your favorite bar cookie? For many it's brownies, the classic example of a bar cookie, and because of that we've dedicated the discussion of brownies to its own page.

But what about non-brownie bar cookies? I have two favorites -- homemade chocolate chip cookie bars (a lunchbox and after school snack staple in our house growing up) and raspberry squares (a delicious combination of flour, oats, brown sugar, and tart raspberry jam) first sampled in Maine years ago.

When you are looking for an easy and delicious baked treat, I hope you will try one of these delicious and easy cookie bar recipes: